02/19/15 – Patrick Cockburn – The Scott Horton Show

Patrick Cockburn, a columnist and author of The Rise of Islamic State: Isis and the new Sunni Revolution, discusses the Islamic State’s fight to the death in Mosul; why Iraqi Sunnis fear Shia militias even more than Isis’s draconian rule; and the publicity value of over-the-top executions.

4 Comments

Albert Bakker
on February 22, 2015 at 4:14 am

You are so right, John. I mean the IS isn’t all that, for sure. They’re islamic, so that isn’t a good thing. But they have the right idea about some stuff. Women’s asses are evil! I mean Jesus didn’t say it outright, but he implied it. You can read it between the lines. Women’s asses are out there to get us in the Western world.

And the apostasy of divorce in the sacred religion of marriage should surely be punishable by something truly horrible, painful perhaps. I mean if the heresy is committed by the woman, I mean the whore. Otherwise we might reasonably expect there to have been good reasons for it.

Al
on February 22, 2015 at 4:34 pm

I appreciate the interview with Patrick Cockburn.

If you ever interview him again, I suggest you ask him if he’s every spoken to any young people (from the west or Europe) who have joined ISIS and/or any who have joined and then grown disenchanted and managed to get out.

Also, I’d be interested to know a bit more about Cockburn’s situation. Like… Is he planning on staying with the Kurds for an extended period of time? Has he found a way to be relatively comfortable there? Does he make excursions to the front lines? Is it somewhat dangerous for him?

A couple of times during the interview he mentioned that had spoken to various people earlier in the day. I think he mentioned a military official and an NGO official. I’d be interested to know how many people he speaks to in the course of a day and generally who they are. This would help me understand not just what he knows, but how he knows what he knows.

Anyway… thanks for doing the interview.

Talha
on February 25, 2015 at 3:25 pm

Love your show Scott, but please stop calling these guys the ‘Islamic State’. If I get a bunch of guys with guns together and promote the idea I’m the King of England – that does not make it so. Call it ‘Daesh’ or whatever pejorative the Muslims and Arabs of that area are themselves calling it.

It is definitely shoring up it’s legitimacy as a state by exercising a monopoly on violence as is the foundation of most modern nation-states, but it has been clearly rejected by the erudite Muslim scholars of the world and its classical learning institutions. The only people really flocking to this idea are basically a subset of Salafi-reformists (many of whose scholarship also rejects this gang-with-territory). All of the classical schools of tradition; Hanafi, Maliki, Hanbali and Sahfi’i are conspicuously missing from this mix.

philadelphialawyer
on February 28, 2015 at 3:30 pm

Excellent interview!

One thing that struck me is that Coburn, who is on the ground, refused to buy into Mr. Horton’s more or less standard take on the IS. Namecalling, belittling, using obscenities, etc, can’t obscure the fact that this group has more or less taken over a large chunk of territory in at least two countries and defended it against all comers…with the “comers” including the Kurdish allies of the US, the US itself, Iran, the pro Iranian Baghdad govt, the “good” Syrian rebels, Assad’s forces, the Turks and so on.

The simple fact is that, in the “failed State” situations that the US has brought about, directly in Iraq and indirectly in Syria, like tends to want to be ruled only by, and only trusts, like. Sunnis don’t want to be ruled by Shi’ites or Kurds. And they will continually fight against the imposition of their rule. The US destroyed the pro Sunni Saddam government in Iraq, then it destroyed the Sunni AQ in M and temporarily bought off the rest of the Sunni Guerilla forces during the Occupation War. And now, for the third time, the US is trying to take and hold Fallujah, Mosul, etc, and the rest of Sunni Iraq. Even if the US succeeds in co ordinating enough forces to take down IS, inevitably, another Sunni based group will establish itself in the area.

And much the same for Syria, now that, with the help of the USA, the minority Shi’ite govt there has been undermined as well.

The real issue is not the beheadings, the burnings alive, the treatment of women, the religious fanaticism, etc, of IS. All of that is highlighted by the US propaganda machine, to build support for another round of, as the Israelis calling, “mowing the grass.” But it really doesn’t matter. For even a nice, friendly, “moderate” Sunni resistance in Sunni Iraq would have the same consequences and be opposed by the same actors (the Baghdad govt, the Shi’ite militias, the Kurds, the Iranians, the Turks, the “good” Syrian rebels, the Assad govt, the USA, etc) as the IS.

Frankly, as an American citizen, I really don’t care, and never did, who rules, or wants to rule, Iraq, Syria or any subpart or partial amalgam thereof. It is none of my business. Whether the various contestants are friendly Gandhians or viscous religious fanatics is simply none of my concern.

Our only interests, geopolitically, are about the oil. Syria doesn’t really have any. Iraq does, but whoever is in charge, including the IS, has no choice but to sell it. We should buy the oil from whoever is in charge, like the Chinese and Japanese do, and not involve ourselves in deciding who is in charge. As things stand now, all three main groups, the alleged “national” govt in Bagdad (ie the Shiites), the Kurds, and the IS control some of the oil and are all three quite willing to sell it. That being the case, I fail to see the problem. Let them, and their various backers, fight all they like. Let them commit all the alleged “atrocities” they desire. We simply will buy the oil from whoever has it.

And, as things now stand, even that is not required. Because the US itself actually gets very, very little of its oil from the ME in general, let alone from Iraq. And oil is becoming less and less critical every day, with new energy technologies, efficiencies in extraction and use, conservation, and so on. Oil is everywhere, and its price is in free fall. And without oil, I fail to see why the ME should matter at all to the USA.